


Gods Can Bleed

by george_notfound



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Brotherly Affection, But not in the typical sense, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Hurt/Comfort, Moderately Explicit Depiction Of Injury, Protective Wilbur Soot, Self-Harm, Self-Mutilation, That's Kind Of The Whole Theme Of The Fic, The Depictions Of Dysphoric Thoughts Are Pretty Explicit, Tommy Has A Severe Dysphoric Episode And Tries To Alter His Body, Trans Male Character, Trans TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Trans Wilbur Soot, Wilbur Is An Elder Trans, Wilbur helps, attempted self-mutilation, he's okay, they're brothers your honor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29330316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/george_notfound/pseuds/george_notfound
Summary: He knew that he was online, he could see the green dot over his icon. He didn’t pick up. And maybe it was selfish of Tommy to expect him to drop whatever he was doing and pick up the call, but god did he want him to.He decided to be selfish.
Relationships: Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 38
Kudos: 502





	Gods Can Bleed

**Author's Note:**

> okay basically i'm trans which means that tommy is trans and wilbur is trans and what tommy does in this is directly based off of something that i did a while ago and wilbur is the kind of presence that i really really really wish that i'd had available to me. unadulterated projection onto characters modeled after some minecraft youtubers. 
> 
> mind the tags, enjoy.

Tommy was having a panic attack.

His throat was closing up and his skin was too tight and everything was too loud and bright and he could FEEL his chest pressing into his binder. He could feel the fabric against  every square centimeter, making him so, so, so aware of everything that was wrong with his body. Wrong with _him_.

He was hyperventilating as he tore at his shirt, letting out a strangled sob as it got tangled around his elbows in the scramble to get it awayawayAWAY. He heard a ripping sound as his binder followed close behind the shirt, but he didn’t care. He barely even registered it. 

The moment of relief at the loss of pressure against his chest was visceral, but short-lived. An almost-scream ripped from his throat as his arms dropped to his sides, brushing against the despised tissue on the way down. The points of contact burned like fire. 

Tommy just wanted them gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, off of him, away from him. The want, no, the _need_ , was echoing around his head, filling him up like a thousand ambulance sirens, nails on a chalkboard, not leaving room for anything else. His hands flailed, blindly searching for something, anything, that would make it stop.

His camping knife was in his hands before he knew what was happening. 

The part of Tommy that knew that there was no way that he could do it, never mind do it and survive, was offline at the moment. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was there, screaming at him to stop. But it didn’t matter, because it couldn’t scream louder than the horrible, intrusive dysphoria. 

He looked down at the wooden-handled knife resting against the top of his chest, angled down against the nauseatingly protruding flesh. He had the vague thought that he should probably be crying right now, but he wasn’t. Good. Crying is for girls. 

He pushed down.

The blade wasn’t dull, but it wasn’t sharp, either. His chest- his _breast_ , as his brain so helpfully contributed- remained stubbornly intact, despite the dull pain that throbbed out from the point of contact. 

He pushed harder.

Skin broke.

He wasn’t sure why he’d expected the knife to stop being met with resistance after the initial puncture, but that wasn’t what happened. The blade stayed where it was, a fraction of a centimeter into his body. Blood began trickling faster than he expected, running down in two little rivulets that traced the contour of his chest. The pain wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d expected it to be, though. Bolstered by his nervous system’s seeming indifference, he pushed down once more, stronger than last time.

The breath was punched out of his lungs and a wave of nausea crashed over him. 

He dropped the knife like it was molten iron, gasping when the point lodged in his flesh tore the short gash open wider as it fell to the floor, not even making a sound when it hit the carpet. The blood was flowing in earnest now, more of it than he thought should be allowed. He could feel it running down his body, swiftly approaching his ankles, and could see even more of it dripping from the peak of his chest directly onto the floor, certainly leaving stains that he couldn’t think about right now. 

Tommy wasn’t sure how much noise he was making, and he wasn’t sure if he should even be worried about it. He couldn’t remember what time it was, what day it was, if his family was home or not. Regardless of the reason, no one came knocking on the door or shouted for him to be quiet, and he couldn’t decide if that was good or bad, because even though he was pretty sure that he’d be engulfed in flame if anyone looked at him right now, he was suddenly so, cripplingly, excruciatingly lonely. 

He was dying, he was sure of it. His brain was killing him from the inside out, and he was going to die alone, and _oh there were the tears_ . 

Tommy didn’t want to die alone. 

He stumbled over to his desk, tripping over his feet as he crashed down into his chair, smashing his hand into his keyboard to wake up his monitor. Discord was already pulled up, and he shoved his headphones haphazardly over his ears as he desperately clicked until he could hear the soft pinging of a pending voice call. Another rattling sob escaped him as the seconds ticked by without a response. 

He knew that he was online, he could _see_ the green dot over his icon. He didn’t pick up. And maybe it was selfish of Tommy to expect him to drop whatever he was doing and pick up the call, but _god_ did he want him to. 

He decided to be selfish. 

‘Help,’ he typed.

‘Please’

‘Cologne’

‘Hlep’

‘Pick up’

‘Please’

‘Please’

The call timed out. He called again. 

‘Please’

‘Help’

‘Serious’

‘I need you’

He was halfway through another semi-coherent text when he finally picked up.

“-ommy,” Wilbur was saying immediately, voice stiff and jagged with fear. “Oh my god, Tommy, I’m so sorry, what’s happened? Are you okay?” 

The younger boy tried to speak, but all that came out was a high-pitched, keening whimper that was quickly cut off by his own hyperventilation. 

“Tommy, what’s happened?” Wilbur repeated, sounding somehow more panicked than he had before. “I’m going to call 999 if you don’t tell me what’s wrong, please.” That got Tommy’s attention.

“No, don’t,” he wheezed. “I, I just, it’s all wrong and it hurts so much and it’s so fucking loud and I can’t make it stop and I think I might be dying,” he managed to rush out in one choked-off breath. “Maybe, maybe I wish that I was dying, Wilbur, I don’t want to _feel_ like this anymore, it hurts so fucking bad. I would rather be dead than feel like this for another second, I swear that I would. I just want it to go away.” There was a beat of silence, and Tommy could sense the icy fear radiating off of his friend even through the call. 

“Tommy, are you in danger? You need to tell me if you’re in physical danger.”

“I- No. No, I don’t think so, but it hurts so bad and I can’t make it stop.” Wilbur breathed out an audible sigh of relief, but even that was saturated with anxiety.

“Okay. Okay, thank you. You’re having a panic attack, Toms, I need you to breathe for me. You’re going to make yourself sick if you don’t calm down a bit.”

Tommy trusted Wilbur. He trusted Wilbur, Wilbur had never hurt him, and always told him that he never would. He tried to slow his breathing, but was only marginally successful before his lungs heaved involuntarily again. Wilbur praised him anyway. 

“Good job, Tommy. You’re doing good. Can you do it again, please?”

He did as he was told, allowing Wilbur to guide him through the pattern over and over again, until the gasps were coming less frequently than the (somewhat) even breaths. Wilbur gave him a second, murmuring syllables that may or may not have been words, letting Tommy know that he was there and that he wasn’t going to leave. 

“Do you want to tell me what hurts?” he asked softly once he was confident enough that the younger was at least calm enough to answer. Tommy whimpered a bit before replying, and Wilbur tensed, worried that he’d re-triggered the boy.

“Dysphoria,” he answered, voice scratchy and quiet in a way that felt dreadfully incongruent with his personality. Wilbur let out a reflexive sound of empathy the moment he processed the word and its implications. 

“Oh, Tommy,” he said sadly. “I’m so sorry, bud. Did something happen that made it get this bad?”

“No, I mean, I don’t know. I don’t think so. I felt fine and then I just suddenly thought about how I’m not a real man and I’m never going to be a real man no matter what I do, and then it was all that I could think about and it hurt really really bad and I couldn’t get it to stop.”

Wilbur sighed, grief and anger welling up inside of him simultaneously. He knew the feeling that Tommy was describing well. He hadn’t felt it as badly as that for a while, everything had gotten a lot better since top surgery and finally finishing second puberty, but he remembered how excruciating and unbearable it all was. _No one_ deserved it, _especially_ not Tommy. 

“Tommy, listen to me,” he commanded gently. “I know that I can’t make the dysphoria go away, and I’m so, so, so sorry that I can’t. I would do it in a heartbeat if I could. But I need you to hear that you _are_ a real man. So am I. You pass as male one hundred percent of the time. Millions of people watch you every single day and they haven’t been able to tell, even the ones who are trans themselves. And I know that me telling you this isn’t going to magically change how you’re feeling, but as a third party, I need you to know on a logical level that your dysphoria is lying to you.”

There was a beat of silence before Wilbur heard a shaky “What a bitch, eh?” He smiled and slumped back in his chair in relief. 

“Yeah. What a fucking bitch.” There was another pause, this one less tense than the last. 

“If I tell you something, do you promise not to freak out?” 

Wilbur shot upright again. Damnit. 

“I- maybe. That depends. Tell me,” he demanded. He heard a nervous hum as Tommy weighed his options.

“I, um. I kind of tried to cut my chest off,” he mumbled. Wilbur inhaled sharply, but Tommy barreled on before he could say anything. “Not just now, but when I was freaking out. Before I called you. And I know that I shouldn’t have done it and that there was literally no possible way that it could have ended well, but I wasn’t really thinking. It’s not too bad, though! I only got maybe a centimeter in on one side. It _is_ bleeding a fair bit though, and it hasn’t really stopped as much as I would like, but I’m not going to bleed out or anything, promise.”

Wilbur let out a shaky breath and rubbed the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up his face a bit. “Jesus, Tommy,” he muttered. “Sorry bud, I’m gonna have to freak out a little bit over this one. I’m-” He floundered for a second, not knowing where to go from there. “Okay. Okay, first of all, I wish you hadn’t done that but I’m not mad at you. What- what did you use? To try to… cut them off, I mean.”

“Knife.”

He wasn’t sure why his stomach flipped at that. It’s not like he’d been expecting him to say ‘oh, well I used a sterile medical scalpel, Wilbur!’ Even so, the dread that had filled him the moment Tommy told him that he’d hurt himself intensified. 

“Yeah, okay. Um, have you taken care of it at all?”

“No, I did it right before I called you.”

Wilbur cursed internally, quickly opening a new tab and searching how to care for an open flesh wound. “Well, that’s probably not very good,” he said absently, trying to let Tommy know that he was still there while using most of his brain to frantically click through articles, trying to find one that would just tell him what to do, damnit. 

“Okay,” he said finally, squinting at the (gross) example photos for what was classified as a deep wound versus a superficial one. “Um, is the wound gaping open? Like, when you look at it can you see white or yellow tissue?”

“Yeah.”

“Hm, okay. You said that it hasn’t stopped bleeding, yeah?”

“No, it hasn’t” 

Wilbur sighed again. “Okay, Tommy? I don’t think that you’re going to like this, but I need you to either send me a picture or tell your parents what happened. Someone needs to see if you need to go to hospital, and while I love you and value you, I don’t trust you to be an unbiased judge in this situation. If you send me a photo you don’t have to have.. everything in frame,- actually please don’t, I’m not in the mood to get put on a list for having a sixteen year old’s lewds in my possession- I just need a close-up of the wound so I can see how bad it is, okay?”

“I… I don’t want that,” Tommy said, audibly upset.

“That’s perfectly fine, you can tell your parents instead, I’m sure-” He was cut off by the teenager. 

“No, I don’t want to do it at all. I want to pretend that it didn’t happen.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s not an option.” Wilbur _was_ genuinely sorry. He could only imagine how tired Tommy was and how much he just wanted all of this to be over. But he wasn’t willing to risk Tommy’s safety, no matter what. “You can think about it, but I need an answer soon. The longer we wait, the more of a chance of it getting infected there’s going to be.”

Tommy huffed in frustration. “I don’t have to think about it, I’ll show you. Not because I want to, I just don’t want my parents to know unless they have to. They’ll just make a big deal of it.”

“Okay, thank you,” Wilbur said, grateful that he wasn’t making this more difficult than it had to be. “Remember, keep it localized. No… nipples or anything.” He cringed at his own words, knowing that they could potentially upset Tommy, but being serious about not accidentally getting nudes from a minor. He didn’t say anything; the only thing that Wilbur could hear was shuffling that he could only assume was Tommy trying to take a suitable photo. 

There was a quiet ‘thwip’ from Discord as the photo sent. Wilbur’s gut twisted.

“Jesus, Toms,” he said. “That’s… that’s bad.” A noncommittal grunt came through the call. “Okay, I’m- I’m sorry, I know that you didn’t want this, but I think that you need to tell your parents. It really looks like you might need stitches, or at least antibiotics.” Tommy didn’t respond for several seconds. 

“Alright,” he finally said, voice dull and resigned. 

“Thank you,” Wilbur said earnestly. “I’m, er, going to text your dad and just tell him that there’s something urgent that you need to talk about.” Tommy was silent as Wilbur fumbled with his phone, shooting his parent a message that would, hopefully, let Tommy talk about it on his own terms while also not letting him weasel his way out of it altogether. 

“You know that I’m doing this because I love you, right?” Wilbur said abruptly after letting Tommy sit in brooding silence for a while. “You’re… you really are like my little brother, and you’re my best friend in a lot of ways, and you’re hurt and I don’t want anything to happen to you. I honestly don’t know what I’d do with myself if you were gone, or even just needlessly suffering, and I could have done something to stop it.” 

“I know.”

It was just two words, but Wilbur could hear the sincerity and gratitude behind them, even through the exhaustion and frustration. He smiled. 

“I love you,” he repeated. 

“Yeah, I love you too, Wil.”

**Author's Note:**

> alright so that was unbetaed and almost completely unrevised, so i hope that it wasn't too incoherent. 
> 
> i really really do appreciate comments a whole lot, especially on works like this that hold significant emotional weight for me. i respond to every comment that i get, even just single sentences about how it made you feel. please refrain from criticism, though, receiving it is a stressful and negative experience for me as a writer. thank you for reading!


End file.
